1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900
France's President Faure dies suddenly at Paris February 16 at age 57 during a conversation in his study at the Elysée Palace with his mistress, Mme. Steinheil (née Marguerite Japy), having opposed a second trial for Captain Dreyfus. Emile Loubet, 60, is elected to succeed him. The Action Française right-wing political movement founded by Charles Maurras, now 31, gains support from the new Paris monthly review L'Action Française, edited by novelist-pamphleteer Léon Daudet, now 32, who rallies the defeated opponents of Alfred Dreyfus with royalist and nationalist invective. Former minister of the interior René Waldeck-Rousseau forms a new government in June as demonstrations and counterdemonstrations over the Dreyfus Affair jeopardize public order, a military court finds Dreyfus guilty of treason in September after a retrial forced by public opinion (see 1898), but some of the evidence against him is known to be forged and Premier Waldeck-Rousseau persuades the president to grant him a pardon September 19 in hopes of avoiding further controversy (see 1906).
A Philippine Republic is proclaimed in January (see 1898). Two U.S. privates open fire on Filipino soldiers outside Manila on the night of February 4; the Filipinos retaliate, and 60 U.S. soldiers are killed along with 700 Filipinos. The incident serves to rally support for the Treaty of Paris, whose ratification has been opposed by Andrew Carnegie (who has offered the United States government $20 million to grant the Filipinos independence), the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the Anti-Imperialist League, and even publisher William Randolph Hearst, with some of the opposition inspired by reports of Americans having introduced prostitution in the Philippines and U.S. soldiers returning home with sexually transmitted diseases. The U.S. Senate votes February 7 to ratify the treaty, and a 3½-year war begins between U.S. troops and Filipino national forces led by Emilio Aguinaldo, now 28, and Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina, 21. Some 500 U.S. troops are killed in 2 months, 60,000 reinforcements are called up in August, Aguinaldo resorts to guerrilla tactics, and although U.S. forces secure Luzon November 24 many Americans oppose the "imperialist" war (see 1900). U.S. troops capture revolutionist Apolinario Mabini in December, he refuses to swear allegiance to the United States, and he is exiled to Guam, where he will be held until early 1903. The United States acquires Wake Island to complete a string of coaling stations for ships crossing the Pacific.
Japanese naval officer-statesman Hakashuka (Count) Kaishu Katsu dies at his native Tokyo January 21 at age 75.
U.S. Secretary of State John (Milton) Hay, 61, proposes an "open door" policy in China and receives support from the great powers. They will agree that all the imperialist countries shall have equal commercial opportunity in spheres of special interest (see 1900).
French officials in Indochina establish their governor in a residence at the Laotian city of Vientiane on the Mekong River and will make it their administrative capital, which it will remain (with an interruption by the Japanese in the 1940s) until 1953.
Spain withdraws from Cuba under terms of the Treaty of Paris, ratified by the U.S. Senate February 7. The United States has borne the cost of transporting 23,000 Spanish soldiers back to Spain, which cedes Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. Cuba gains her independence from Spain, which loses her last dominions in the Americas (see 1902; Platt Amendment, 1901).
Puerto Rican patriot Luis Muñoz Rivera resigns as president of the island's first autonomist cabinet as Washington ends the island's short-lived home rule. Muñoz Rivera goes to New York, where he will publish a magazine to make Americans aware of what is happening to his homeland.
Former Venezuelan dictator Antonio Guzmán Blanco dies in exile at Paris July 20 at age 70. A private rebel army headed by former cowhand Cipriano Castro, 30, and his lieutenant Juan Vicente Gómez attacks Caracas and seizes power as supreme military commander, beginning a new dictatorship that will continue until 1908. Castro has had no formal education, he became governor of his Andean province (Táchira) by gaining the support of a powerful general, was exiled to Colombia when the government at Caracas was overthrown in 1892, has amassed a large fortune through illegal cattle trading, and will increase that fortune in the next 9 years as he loots the country's treasury to finance his profligate lifestyle while having his political opponents murdered or sent into exile and putting down frequent rebellions (see blockade, 1902).
West Africa's Ashanti tribesmen stage their final uprising against the British (see 1896). Colonial officer Sir Fredric Hodgson has provoked the Ashanti by demanding that they surrender the Golden Stool of Friday that has been their sacred symbol of power for the past century. Hodgson wants the throne so that he may sit upon it as governor of the Gold Coast, but the tribesmen lay siege to his fortress, and it is 2 months before he and his wife can escape to the coast.
"The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling appears in McClure's magazine. The Times of London calls it "an address to the United States."
The Windsor Treaty signed October 14 between Britain and Portugal safeguards the latter's sovereignty over her existing African colonies and reaffirms the alliance that has existed since 1386 (see 1891).
A second Anglo-Boer War begins in South Africa October 12 as President Kruger of the Boer Republic acts to block suspected British moves toward acquiring the rich Transvaal with its gold mines (see 1896). Equipped with Krupp artillery, the Boers lay siege to Mafeking on the Transvaal-Bechuanaland border October 13, with 10,000 men under the command of General Pieter A. Cronjé, now 63, who sends 6,000 of his men 250 miles south to besiege Kimberley October 15. Colonel Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 42, has only 745 men plus 450 irregulars to defend Mafeking, and for artillery he has only four antique muzzle-loading seven-pound cannon and two improvised guns, an improvised armored train, plus seven medium and two heavy machine guns (the Boers initially have 10 Krupp 12-pound field guns plus a Creusot heavy gun, and they still have four of the field guns after the diversion of troops to Kimberley). The railway junction town of Ladysmith in western Natal comes under siege November 2; commanded by Petrus Joubert, now 68, the Afrikaan siege force has 20,000 men at Ladysmith at the outset, and its 40 guns include two Creusot 155mm heavy guns. The 13,745-man British force at Ladysmith is commanded by Afghan War veteran Lieut. Gen. Sir George Stuart White, now 64, and has 50 guns, including two 4.7-inch naval guns. The British are equipped with Vickers-Maxim weapons supplied by Turkish-born Greek arms dealer Basil Zaharoff, 50, who also supplies the Boers, making a fortune (see Maxim, 1883).
The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is established by British general (Francis) Reginald Wingate, 38, who has served in the Egyptian intelligence and fought in several battles against the Mahdi in the 1880s. He engages the remnants of Sudan's surviving Mahdi warriors at Kordofan November 24 and the caliph (khalifah) Abd Allah is killed at age 53 (see 1898). Wingate is appointed governor general of the Sudan in December (he will serve in that capacity until 1916) and commander in chief (sirdar) of the Egyptian Army.
British forces in South Africa suffer humiliating reverses in December: a 2,300-man Boer force under the command of General J. H. Olivier defeats a 3,000-man British force under Lieut. Gen. Sir William Gatacre December 10 at Stormberg, a railway junction 50 miles south of the Orange River; a 7,000-man Boer force under the command of General Cronjé and General Jacobus De La Rey defeats a 14,000-man British force under Lieut. Gen. Lord Methuen December 10 to 11 at Magersfontein, 14 miles south of Kimberley; and when a 21,000-man British force under General Sir Redvers Buller, 60, tries to force a crossing of the Tugela River December 15 at Colenso, south of Ladysmith, it is repulsed with heavy losses by a 6,000-man Boer force under the command of General Louis Botha (see 1900).
The Royal Geographical Society establishes the Oxford School of Geography and names as its director political geographer Halford J. (John) Mackinder, 38, who leads an expedition to East Africa and makes the first ascent of Mt. Kenya (see Rebmann, Krapf, 1848; d'Abruzzi, 1906). A geographer, says Mackinder, must also be "an explorer and adventurer" (see Nonfiction, 1902).
The Harriman Expedition to Alaska leaves Seattle May 31 aboard the steamer George W. Elder with 11 members of financier Edward H. Harriman's family and servants plus 23 scientists who include New York-born U.S. Biological Survey director C. (Clinton) Hart Merriam, 44; Nashua, New Hampshire-born Amherst geologist and mineralogist Benjamin K. (Kendall) Emerson, 55; naturalists John Burroughs, George Bird Grinnell, John Muir, and others; Ithaca, New York-born artist-naturalist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, 28; and Wisconsin-born photographer Edward S. (Sheriff) Curtis, 31, who has met Grinnell on Oregon's Mount Rainier. Proceeding up the Inland Passage and the Gulf of Alaska, the party goes through the Aleutian Archipelaga, stops briefly on the Siberian coast, and reaches Nome August 20, having discovered numerous genera and species new to science, collected specimens and native artifacts, and recorded its findings in journals, paintings, and photographs.
Italian explorer Luigi (Amedeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco), duca d'Abruzzi, 26, heads an Arctic expedition that sets a record by reaching 86°34' North (see Nansen, 1895). A grandson of Victor Emmanuel II and son of the late nobleman who served as Spain's Amedeo I, Abruzzi scaled Alaska's Mount St. Elias last year, becoming the first to do so (see Peary, 1909).
Belgian naval officer Adrien-Victor-Joseph Gerlache de Gomery, 33, returns from a 2-year Antarctic expedition, the first such expedition to focus on scientific observation. Accompanied by his Norwegian first mate Roald Amundsen, 26, and a small crew aboard the ship Belgica, he made some discoveries north of Graham (Palmer) Land before being trapped in pack ice for 13 months, becoming the first vessel to winter in the Antarctic (see Amundsen, 1906).
Explorer Sven Anders Hedin follows the Tarim River through western China as he begins a 3-year exploration of the Gobi Desert (see 1893; 1905).
English chocolate manufacturer-philanthropist (Benjamin) Seebohm Rowntree, 28, estimates that between one-fourth and one-third of the British population lives in "poverty" with "earnings insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of mere physical efficiency."
Polish-born Berlin Marxist Rosa Luxemburg, 28, attacks arguments that labor's working conditions have improved and that reforms must come from within the system. Only international revolution can help the working man, says "Bloody Rosa" in April, and she will continue to agitate until her death in 1919 (see 1914; 1915; 1916; 1917; 1918).
Bechtel Group has its beginnings as Freeport, Illinois-born mule driver Warren A. Bechtel, 26, quits his $2.75-per-day job hauling train rails in Oklahoma Territory and starts what will become a worldwide engineering and construction concern. Bechtel will follow the rails west and open an office at San Francisco (see Hoover Dam, 1931).
Onetime silver king Horace "Hod" Tabor dies of appendicitis at Denver April 10 at age 69, having had to go back to work as a hardrock miner 3 years ago. His first wife, Augusta, died in luxury at Pasadena early in 1895, but he leaves his wife Elizabeth "Baby Doe" and their two daughters penniless.
Amalgamated Copper Company is founded in April by German-born New York entrepreneur Leonard Lewisohn, 51, and his younger brother Adolph, who last year erected the Raritan Copper Works at Perth Amboy, New Jersey. They have received backing for the $65 million concern from Standard Oil Company executives William Rockefeller and Henry Huddleston Rogers and from Brownsville, Texas-born New York banker James Stillman, 48, of National City Bank. Amalgamated buys the Anaconda mine at Butter, Montana, from Marcus Daly (see 1881). The deal creates a national scandal when it turns out that Standard Oil officers have made huge profits by selling public stock in the new company before the old owners were paid. Anaconda Company will be incorporated in 1911, and it will acquire Amalgamated in 1915.
U.S. copper producers merge to create the American Smelting and Refining Company trust as growing use of electricity increases demand for copper wire. The Guggenheim family refuses to join the ASARCO copper trust, choosing instead to compete with it (see 1888). Meyer Guggenheim forms alliances with mine owners, gives them financial backing in many cases, and founds Guggenheim Exploration Company to seek new ore deposits (see 1901).
Idaho miners continue to fight for union recognition (see 1892); they try to halt operations in the gold, lead, and silver mines in the rich Coeur d'Alene region, some 150 union men force workers away from the Bunker Hill Mine April 26, a dynamite blast April 29 destroys the mine's office along with all its records, and Idaho's Indiana-born governor, Frank Steunenberg, 39, wires President McKinley to send in federal troops (all 500 members of the state's National Guard are serving in the Philippines). Cavalry and infantry forces reach Boise May 4, the strike is broken by black infantrymen from Brownsville, Texas, who distinguished themselves in last year's Spanish-American War. They round up more than 1,000 white strikers and herd them into detention camps, where they are held in specially built "bullpens" for 6 months, and Steunenberg loses the political support that swept him into office in 1896; his suppression of the miners' strikes will end his political career in next year's election. Federal troops will occupy the Coeur d'Alene region until 1901 (see 1905).
The United Mine Workers of America is organized under the leadership of Illinois coal miner John Mitchell, 29. He tries to join anthracite coal workers with bituminous coal workers, who formed a union 9 years ago and struck the mines in 1897 (see Virden, Illinois, massacre, 1898), but ethnic divisions make his work difficult: Irish miners fight against Slavic miners who fight against Italian miners. U.S. mines continue to employ thousands of boys barely into their teens, mostly to pick rocks and slate out of the coal with their bare hands, often in freezing weather (see 1900).
Mining and traction magnate Lloyd Tevis dies at San Francisco July 24 at age 75, leaving a vast fortune.
E. I. du Pont de Nemours is incorporated in Delaware (see 1897). Du Pont has been making dynamite since 1880 and now controls 90 percent of U.S. blasting powder production plus 95 percent of U.S. gunpowder production (see 1902; Nobel, 1866).
International Paper Company is created by a merger of nearly 30 U.S. and Canadian paper companies. It will purchase large timber tracts in Maine and California and build up a national marketing organization. Union Bag & Paper is reorganized to create a $27 million trust that tries to squeeze out competitors such as International Paper.
J. P. Stevens & Company is founded at New York by Massachusetts-born textile merchant John Peter Stevens, 31, whose grandfather, Nathaniel, started a business at North Andover in 1812 (see 1837). Young Stevens has earned enough money working at the Boston dry goods commission house Faulkner, Page & Company to start his own business, he sells the products of the North Andover Mill, now operated by his uncle Moses, and will go on not only to buy interests in many New England mills but also to invest heavily in Southern mills.
Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States founder Henry Baldwin Hyde dies of heart failure at New York May 2 at age 65. His six-foot-four-inch son James Hazen Hyde, 23, received his bachelor's degree from Harvard last year and inherits control of the 40-year-old company, whose assets have grown to a phenomenal $400 million, but the younger Hyde is more interested in horse racing and French culture than in business, the dining room of his 400-acre Islip, Long Island, estate the Oaks seats 100; he has townhouses at New York and Paris, owns a private railroad car, and will play fast and loose with Equitable's assets, which are six times the gold reserves of the U.S. Treasury. Half of Americans' savings are in life insurance or annuities, which pay dividends and are considered safe as houses, whereas equities are deemed appropriate only for the very rich (see Hyde, 1905).
National Steel Company is created through a merger engineered by Chicago lawyer W. H. Moore, who last year organized American Tin Plate Company. He also founds American Steel Company with help from his brother James.
Armco Steel has its beginnings in the American Rolling Mill Company incorporated December 2 at Middleton, Ohio, by Cincinnati entrepreneur George M. Verity, 34, who at great cost and after many failures has developed a continuous wide-sheet roller mill. His process revolutionizes the manufacture of sheet steel, his mill on the Miami River will turn out its first steel sheets in February 1901, and he will license other firms to use the process (see 1906).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 5.57 points (8.7 percent) December 18 as interest rates rise. British losses in the Boer War and U.S. losses in the Philippines are contributing factors.
The S. S. Kresge chain-store empire has its beginnings in a 5-and-10-cent store opened by Pennsylvania-born Detroit merchant Sebastian Spering Kresge, 31, who has been a partner of John G. McCrory (see 1912).
The first U.S. gas turbine is patented by inventor Charles G. Curtis of 1896 Curtis steam turbine fame.
Nippon Electric Company (NEC) is founded with 92 employees and ¥200,000 in capital. Initially owned 54 percent by the U.S. firm Western Electric, it will grow to be Japan's largest producer of electrical equipment.
Renault Frères is founded in March by French auto hobbyist Louis Renault, 22, and his brother Marcel, who built their first voiture last year (see 1900).
The first Opel motorcar is introduced in the spring by German bicycle maker Adam Opel AG at Rüsselsheim (see 1866). When founder Opel died of typhoid fever 4 years ago at age 57 his company was producing 2,000 bicycles per year and its sewing machine was the largest-selling in Europe; his sons Fritz and Wilhelm met last year with 39-year-old carriage builder Friedrich Lutzmann of Dessau and acquired his little Anhaltische Motorwagenfabrik, he has designed the "Opel Patent Motorwagen, System Lutzmann," but it is primitive compared to other motorcars on the market (see 1901).
Fiat (Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino) is founded at Turin July 1 with a capitalization of 800,000 lire ($152,400) (see Bernardi, 1894). Eccentric nobleman Emanuele Bricherasio di Cachacerano has enlisted eight investors who include notably cavalry lieutenant Giovanni Agnelli, 33, whose family will come to control the company and retain that control into the 21st century. Fiat completes 10 three-horsepower motorcars by November; it will grow to become Europe's largest automaker and Italy's largest industrial firm (see tractors, 1919; "Topolino," 1936).
Audi Automobilwerke GmbH has its beginnings in the A. Horch & Cie. firm opened in November at Ehrenfeld, outside Cologne, by German engineer August Horch, 31, who has worked for Karl Benz. He will produce his first motorcar in 1901, move his company the following year to Reichenbach, and move in 1904 to Zwickau (see 1909).
U.S. auto production reaches 2,500, up from 1,000 last year.
Lawyer George B. Selden obtains backing from a group of financiers to license carmakers to license his 1895 road locomotive patent. They will bring a lawsuit for infringement of the patent next year and will win (see 1903).
A Stanley Steamer driven by Francis E. Stanley climbs to the top of Mount Washington (see 1896; 1906).
Locomobile Company of America is founded by Cosmopolitan magazine publisher John Brisben Walker, who has bought out F. E. Stanley and his brother for $250,000 with backing from several associates. Locomobile takes over the Stanley plant at Newton, Massachusetts, but the directors of the new company will soon have a falling out, and the Stanley twins will take over Locomobile (see 1902).
B. F. Goodrich at Akron, Ohio, produces the first U.S. clincher tires, producing 19-ply rubber tires in sizes ranging from 28 x 2½ inches to 36 x 3 inches (see 1872).
Pirelli pneumatic automobile tires are introduced by Milan's Pirelli Company (see 1872).
The Dayton Special Roadster bicycle introduced by the Davis Sewing Machine Company has cylindrical-ball hubs and 23-inch tires mounted on wooden rims; it marks the real start of Huffy bicycles (see 1892) and will be followed 5 years hence by the Dayton Racer, a speedy model with dropped handlebars, 28-inch tires mounted on narrow wooden rims, and a patented sprocket chainwheel (see 1925).
Boston's South Station opens January 1 to complement the North Station built in 1894. Designed by the same architectural firm (Shepley, Ruten, and Coolidge), it replaces several smaller stations to serve the Boston & Providence, Old Colony, New England, and Boston & Albany railroads.
The four-cylinder compound locomotive invented by Pennsylvania-born mechanical engineer Samuel M. (Matthews) Vauclain, 43, will gain wide acceptance.
American Car and Foundry (ACF), founded at Berwick, Pennsylvania, to compete with the Pullman Palace Car Company Founders, includes Charles Lang Freer, 43, who has been building railroad cars since age 17; ACF will become the world's largest maker of freight cars.
New York Central chairman Cornelius Vanderbilt II dies at New York September 12 at age 55.
Boston's last horsecar runs December 24. A trolley line replaces the horsecar as Boston extends its 2-year-old subway.
Minor Keith sees an opportunity for passenger traffic on United Fruit Company's banana boats and charters four new ships built originally for the U.S. Navy. The Great White Fleet that he establishes includes the S.S. Farragut, S.S. Admiral Dewey, S.S. Admiral Schley, and S.S. Admiral Sampson, each able to carry 53 passengers and 35,000 bunches of bananas (see 1904).
Former shipbuilder William H. Webb dies at his native New York October 30 at age 83; White Star Line chairman Thomas Henry Ismay dies at Dawpool, near Birkenhead, November 23 at age 62 (his son [Joseph] Bruce, 36, becomes head of the firm).
The Smith & Wesson .38-caliber Military & Police revolver introduced by the 43-year-old Springfield, Massachusetts, firm will be its most widely known weapon (see 1870). The company introduced the first double-action revolver in the 1880s (see 1908).
German-born University of Chicago biologist Jacques Loeb, 40, pioneers artificial parthenogensis (reproduction without fertilization) by exposing sea urchin larvae to controlled environmental changes and bringing about their development. He will raise parthenogenic frogs to sexual maturity and show that the initiation of cell division in fertilization is chemically controlled and effectively separate from the transmission of hereditary traits.
Boston-born astronomer William Henry Pickering, 41, discovers the ninth satellite of Saturn and names it Phoebe. He has led solar eclipse expeditions since 1878.
French mathematician (Félix-Edouard-Justin-) Emile Borel, 28, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris pioneers the modern theory of functions of a real variable. His systematic theory advances understanding of a conventional sum of a divergent series (a series of numbers that does not approach a given number).
Mathematician Sophus Lie dies at Kristiania (Oslo) February 18 at age 56; Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh at New Haven, Connecticut, March 18 at age 67; chemist Sir Edward Frankland while on holiday at Golaa, Norway, August 9 at age 74; chemist Robert W. Bunsen at Heidelberg August 16 at age 88.
A violent hurricane sweeps Puerto Rico August 8, killing 2,100 and leaving thousands homeless. Assigned to a hospital treating native victims of the storm, U.S. Army Medical Corps assistant surgeon Bailey K. (Kelly) Ashford, 25, finds that 75 percent are anemic. When he examines their feces, he finds hookworm eggs (see Froelich, 1789), and he treats patients with arsenic, iron, and improved diet (those who do not respond are treated with thymol and epsom salts); Ashford eliminates hookworm and sharply reduces the death toll from anemia (see Stiles, 1902).
A cholera pandemic begins that will continue until 1923, affecting much of the world.
Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) is perfected by German chemists Felix Hoffman and Hermann Dreser of Bayer AG (see 1897). Concerned about his father's arthritis, Hoffman 6 years ago obtained a substance from willow tree bark that suppressed the enzyme cyclo-oxygenase, which plays a major role in pain and inflammation; he and Dreser have gone on to develop a powdered analgesic (painkiller) and fever reducer from coal tar; the world's first truly synthetic drug, it is less irritating to gastrointestinal tracts than salicylic acid, the addition of the neutral salt calcium glutamate will make it less irritating still, it will be marketed by prescription under the trade name Bayer Aspirin beginning in 1905. It will go on to become the world's largest-selling over-the-counter drug and prove valuable to patients with heart disease. Although still liable to cause digestive bleeding, ulcers, and other serious problems, it will be consumed as tablets by the billion.
Johnson & Johnson introduces zinc oxide adhesive plasters developed with help from some leading U.S. surgeons (see 1886). The new plasters avoid irritation to delicate skin, a blessing to patients; they also have greater strength and better sticking qualities that will make them valuable to surgeons (see 1916; Band-Aid, 1921).
German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, 43, introduces the term dementia praecox for what later (1908) will be called schizophrenia. Kraepelin introduced the term paramnesia in 1886 to denote errors in memory and adapts the term demence-precoce first used in 1860 by the late Benedict Morel. In the sixth edition of his textbook Compendium der Psychiatrie he makes a distinction between manic-depresive psychosis and dementia praecox, which he considers endogenous and incurable.
Surgeon Sir James Paget dies at London December 30 at age 85.
The Merck Manual published on a nonprofit basis by the 8-year-old New York-based Merck & Company will appear in updated editions for more than a century, providing the medical and scientific professions (and later laymen) with a reference work describing symptoms and available remedies (giving no preference to those made by Merck) for every known condition. It will gain universal respect and become the most widely used reference source in medicine.
Agnostic orator Robert Green Ingersoll dies of heart disease at Dobbs Ferry, New York, July 21 at age 65 and is buried as he requested without religious ceremony; evangelist and hymn writer Dwight Lyman Moody dies at Northfield, Massachusetts, December 22 at age 62. The Chicago Bible Institute that he founded 10 years ago will become the Moody Bible Institute.
The School and Society by University of Chicago philosopher-psychologist John Dewey, 39, pioneers progressive education by challenging traditional teaching methods based on lectures, memorization, and mechanical drill. The Burlington, Vermont-born teacher suggests that education is a process of acculturation, an accumulation and assimilation of experience whereby a child develops into a balanced personality with wide awareness.
Saturday Evening Post publisher G. H. K. Curtis appoints his literary editor George Horace Lorimer, 32, editor-in-chief (see 1897). The Post's circulation remains below 2,000, but Lorimer will build it to more than 3 million in the next 38 years by attracting such writers as Stephen Vincent Benét, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Galsworthy, O. Henry, Ring Lardner, Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, John P. Marquand, Frank Norris, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Booth Tarkington (see J. Walter Thompson, 1901).
Reuters News Agency founder Paul Julius, Freiherr (Baron) von Reuter, dies at Nice February 25 at age 82; Chicago Tribune editor-in-chief Joseph Medill of heart disease at his San Antonio, Texas, winter home March 16 at age 75, saying, "What is the news this morning?" Jingoistic to the last, he is succeeded by his son-in-law Robert W. (Wilson) Patterson Jr., 59, whose clergyman father founded suburban Lake Forest in the 1850s and who will head the paper until his death in 1910; Linotype inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler dies at Baltimore October 28 at age 45 (more than 3,000 of his machines are now in use, and there are three Linotype factories—in New York, England, and the inventor's native Germany).
Marconi Wireless Company of America is incorporated November 22 under New Jersey law (see 1896).
Who's Who in America is published for the first time by Ohio-born entrepreneur Albert Nelson Marquis, 45, whose listings will be updated in new editions for more than a century.
Nonfiction: The Theory of the Leisure Class by Wisconsin-born University of Chicago social scientist Thorstein (Bunde) Veblen, 42, says that society adopts decorum (or etiquette) and refined tastes as evidence of gentility because they can be acquired only with leisure. Veblen introduces such concepts as "conspicuous consumption," "conspicuous waste," and "vicarious" consumption and waste to explain social behavior that has either defied explanation or gone unexamined; Psychology and Life by Hugo Münsterberg, who joined the Harvard faculty 2 years ago at the persuasion of William James and President Eliot; The Philosophy of Marx (La filosofia di Marx) by University of Rome philosophy professor Giovanni Gentile, 24, whose work shows the influence of the early 19th century German idealist philosopher G. W. F. Hegel.
Fiction: McTeague by Chicago-born New York novelist Frank Norris (Benjamin Franklin Norris Jr.), 29, is a naturalistic story of San Francisco slum life; The Awakening by St. Louis-born New Orleans novelist Kate Chopin (née Katherine O'Flaherty), 48, whose heroine, Edna Pontellier, is married to a respectable merchant but falls in love with another man, leaves her husband, finds that there is no place for her in society, and commits suicide; The Gentleman from Indiana by "Hoosier" novelist (Newton) Booth Tarkington, 30; "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" by Mark Twain, who displays a tone of bitterness and pessimism about humanity; Richard Carvel by St. Louis-born New Hampshire novelist Winston Churchill, 27, whose historical romances will be widely popular; Dom Casamurro by Joaquim Machado de Assis, who has been president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since its founding 3 years ago; Stalky and Co. (autobiographical stories) by Rudyard Kipling, who derides the cult of compulsory games; The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana) by Polish novelist Wladyslaw Reymont, 32; "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" ("Dvadtst shesti i vdna") by Maksim Gorky, whose story depicts working conditions in a bakery; "A Message to Garcia" (short story) by Buffalo, New York, publisher Elbert Green Hubbard, 43, who 4 years ago established the Roycroft Press to publish the literary magazine the Philistine, whose contents he writes entirely himself. Hubbard moralizes about self-reliance and perseverance in a story based on an incident from last year's Spanish-American War; Tales of Space and Time by H. G. Wells; The Amateur Cracksman by English novelist Ernest William Hornung, 33, introduces the gentleman burglar Raffles.
Poetry: Beyond the Hills of Dream by William Wilfred Campbell; The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems by Oregon-born California poet Edwin (originally Charles Edward Anson) Markham, 46, appears in the San Francisco Examiner in January. Inspired by the 1863 Millet painting, Markham's title poem is quickly reprinted around the world as Millet's peasant becomes a symbol of exploited labor.
Juvenile: the first of some 30 Rover Boys adventure novels by Elizabeth, New Jersey-born author Edward Stratemeyer, 36, will lead to the establishment in 1906 of the Stratemeyer Literary Syndicate with hack writers fleshing out plots and characters devised by Stratemeyer, who has been turning out books since 1894 in the Horatio Alger style. Published under various pen names, the books will include The Motor Boys (by "Clarence Young"), Tom Swift (by "Victor Appleton"), The Bobbsey Twins (by "Laura Lee Hope"), The Boy Scouts by "Lieutenant Howard Payson"), The Hardy Boys (by "Franklin W. Dixon"), and Nancy Drew mysteries (by "Carolyn Keene"); The Story of Betty by Rahway, New Jersey-born author Carolyn Wells, 37; The Story of Little Black Sambo by Scottish writer-illustrator Helen (Brody) Bannerman (née Watson), 37, who 10 years ago married a physician in the Indian Medical Service and accompanied him to Madras. Her East Indian hero thwarts his tiger pursuers by turning them to butter; The Story of the Treasure Seekers: The Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune by Fabian Society cofounder E. (Edith) Nesbit, now 41.
Author Horatio Alger dies at Natick, Massachusetts, July 18 at age 67. Many libraries banned his works for decades, some critics have condemned them for giving boys unrealistic hopes, and they will become bestsellers only in the first decade of the next century, when publishers put them out in cheaper editions.
Painting: Two Tahitian Women by Paul Gauguin; The Cook and Paysages et intérieurs (lithographs) by Edouard Vuillard; Red-headed Woman Sitting in M. Forest's Garden by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Portrait of Carles Casagemas by Pablo Picasso; Mrs. Horace O. Havemeyer by Mary Cassatt; The Agnew Clinic by Thomas Eakins, who lost his teaching job at the Drexel Institute 4 years ago following complaints that he had made advances to female models (his canvas depicts a mastectomy being performed on a sleeping woman of some beauty); Umbrellas in the Rain (watercolor) by Maurice Prendergast. Alfred Sisley dies at Moret-sur-Loing January 29 at age 59; Rosa Bonheur May 5 at her estate near the Forest of Fontainebleau at age 77.
Sculpture: The Puritan by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
Theater: Barbara Frietchie by Clyde Fitch 10/23 at New York's Criterion Theater, with Julia Marlowe, 83 perfs.; Children of the Ghetto by Israel Zangwill 10/16 at New York's Herald Square Theater, with a 16-member cast directed by James A. Herne, 49 perfs.; Uncle Vanya (Dyadya Vanya) by Anton Chekhov 10/26 at the Moscow Art Theater; Ashes (Cenizes) by Spanish playwright Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, 33, 12/7 at Madrid's Teatro de Larra; The Tenor (Der Kammersang) by German playwright Frank (Benjamin Franklin) Wedekind, 35, 12/10 at Berlin's Neues Theater.
Opera: Mme. Schumann-Heink makes her Metropolitan Opera debut 1/9 singing the role of Ortrud in the 1850 Wagner opera Lohengrin. She will continue at the Met until 1932; Cendrillon (Cinderella) 5/24 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with music by Jules Massenet.
Ballerina Carlotta Grisi dies at Geneva May 20 at age 79, having retired at age 35.
First performances: Concerto No. 2 in D minor for Piano and Orchestra by Edward MacDowell 3/5 at New York's Chickering Hall; Symphony No. 1 in E minor by Finnish composer Jean (Johann Julius Christian) Sibelius, 33, 4/26 at Helsinki; Catalonia Suite No. 1 for Orchestra by Isaac Albeniz 5/27 at the Théâtre Noveau, Paris; "Enigma" Variations on an Orchestral Theme by English composer Edward (William) EIgar, 42, 6/19 at London (conductor Hans Richter revises the score and adds a coda to create a version that Elgar conducts at the Worcester Festival); "Sea Pictures Songs for Chorus and Orchestra" by Elgar 10/5 at the Norwich Festival.
Waltz king Johann Strauss (the younger) dies at his native Vienna June 3 at age 72; composer Ernest Chausson is killed in a bicycle accident at Limay, Seine-et-Oise, June 10 at age 44; organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Col dies at Paris October 13 at age 88.
Stage musicals: The Rounders 7/12 at New York's Casino Theater, with New York-born actor Joseph Cawthorn, 30, music and lyrics by Ludwig Englander, book by Buffalo-born writer Harry B. Smith, 38, 97 perfs.; Whirl-i-gig 9/21 at Weber and Fields' Broadway Music Hall, with Lilian Russell, with music by John Stromberg, book by Edgar Smith, lyrics by Harry B. Smith, songs that include "Say You Love Me, Sue" and "When Chloe Sings a Song," 264 perfs.; San Toy, or The Emperor's Own 10/21 at Daly's Theatre, London, with music by Sidney Jones, additional music by Lionel Monckton, lyrics by Harry Greenback, Adrian Ross; The Singing Girl 10/23 at New York's Casino Theater, with Joseph Cawthorn, music by Victor Herbert, lyrics by Harry B. Smith, 80 perfs.; Floradora 11/11 at London's Lyric Theatre, with music by Leslie Stuart, lyrics by Ernest Boyd-Jones and English composer-writer Paul A. (Alfred) Rubens, 24, songs that include the second-act number beginning, "Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?" 455 perfs. (It will open next November at New York's Casino Theater and run for 553 perfs.)
Popular songs: "My Wild Irish Rose" by Buffalo, New York-born New York songwriter Chauncey Olcott, 41; "O Sole Mio!" ("Oh, My Sun!") by Neapolitan composer Edoardo di Capna, 35, lyrics by Giovanni Capurro, 30; "Hello, My Baby" by New York-born saloon-keeper's son Joseph D. Howard, 21, lyrics by Ida Emerson that begin, "Hello, ma baby,/ Hello, ma honey,/ Hello, ma ragtime gal."
Scott Joplin's "Original Rag" and "Maple Leaf Rag" are the first ragtime piano pieces to appear in sheet music form. Now 30, Joplin was a band leader at the 1893 Columbian Exposition at Chicago, has been taking courses in harmony and composition at the George Smith College for Negroes in Sedalia, Missouri, while playing piano at local sporting houses that include the Maple Leaf Club, and has developed a complex, ragged-type style, heavily syncopated, which publisher John Stark discovers at Sedalia and which other pianists will soon exploit. "Maple Leaf Rag" has sales of more than 1 million copies, but many white publishers scorn ragtime because of its black roots.
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" by Florida songwriters John Rosamond Johnson, 26, and his brother James, 28, will be called the black national anthem. James Weldon became the first black to be elected to the Florida bar 2 years ago, the Johnson brothers will move to New York in 1901 to begin a brief career as a songwriting team, but James Weldon will soon go back to school to prepare for a larger career (see Fiction, 1912).
Reginald Doherty wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Mrs. Hillyard in women's singles; Malcolm Whitman wins in U.S. men's singles, Marion Jones in women's singles.
English tea magnate Thomas Lipton has the racing yacht Shamrock I built for the first of five efforts that he will make to regain the America's Cup, but the U.S. defender Columbia defeats Lipton's boat 3 to 0.
Ohio-born prizefighter James J. (Jackson) Jeffries, 24, wins the world heavyweight title from Bob Fitzsimmons June 9 with an 11th-round knockout in a match held at Coney Island, New York. The six-foot-two-and-a-half-inch, 220-pound Jeffries will retire undefeated in March 1905 and be succeeded by Marvin Hart (see 1906).
The Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers win their first National League pennant, playing their home games at Washington Park and winning 101 of their 148 games (see 1898). California-born pitcher James Michael "Jim" Hughes, 25, wins 28 games, loses six, and has an earned-run average of 2.68; Brooklyn-born outfielder William Henry "Wee Willie" Keeler, 27, stands less than five feet five inches tall and weighs only 140 pounds but ends the season with a batting average of .377 (see Ebbets Field, 1913).
A liquid-center gutta percha golf ball replaces the solid gutta percha ball used since 1848 (see 1892). Invented by Cleveland golfer Coburn Haskell with help from a B. F. Goodrich scientist, the "bouncing billy" is soon succeeded by a ball with tightly wound rubber threads wrapped around a solid rubber core, and A. G. Spalding will acquire rights to the new ball.
Oswego, New York-born dentist George (Franklin) Grant, 52, receives a patent on the world's first golf tee. One of the first black graduates of the Harvard Dental School, he has devised a small rubber peg (it will soon be made of wood) that can be pushed into the ground and has a slightly concave top to cradle the ball's curved edge.
"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life," says Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York April 10 in a speech at Chicago.
Thorstein Veblen speaks of the burden placed upon women by the struggle to meet standards of "decency" imposed to bring order to the confused and transient social structure of a highly organized industrial community. "Elegant dress serves its purpose of elegance not only in that it is expensive, but also because it is the insignia of leisure," he writes. "It not only shows that the wearer is able to consume a relatively large value, but it argues at the same time that he consumes without producing. The dress of women goes even farther than that of men in the way of demonstrating the wearer's abstinence from productive employment . . . The substantial reason for our tenacious attachment to the skirt is just this: it is expensive and it hampers the wearer at every turn and incapacitates her for all useful exertion. The like is true of the feminine custom of wearing the hair excessively long." Women wear corsets and white gloves to show the world that they need not scrub floors, Chinese bind girls' feet so that they will be unable to walk properly when they grow up, and men in Western societies resist having their wives work because a non-working wife is emblematic of "vicarious leisure" (the man of the house may not be a gentleman of leisure, but heaven forbid that his genteel wife, too, should have to work). She "still, quite unmistakably, remains his chattel in theory, for the habitual rendering of vicarious leisure and consumption is the abiding mark of the unfree servant." "The high heel, the skirt, the impractical bonnet, the corset, and the general disregard of the wearer's comfort which is an obvious feature of all civilized women's apparel, are so many items of evidence to the effect that in the modern civilized scheme of life the woman is still, in theory, the economic dependent of the man."
Missouri becomes the "Show Me" state. Rep. Willard D. Vandiver, 45, (D. Mo.) addresses a naval dinner at Philadelphia and says, "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me."
American Chicle Company is created at New York by a merger of seven chewing-gum manufacturers, including Thomas Adams (see 1871). The new company will have its factory and headquarters in 44th Street, Manhattan, until 1923, when it will move to Thomson Avenue in Long Island City, producing Chiclets, Black Jack, and Dentyne brands.
Dentyne chewing gum is introduced by New York drugstore manager Franklin V. Canning and a neighborhood dentist who have developed a cinnamon-flavored gum designed to promote dental hygiene (the brand name is a contraction of the two words). The flavor actually comes from oil of cassia, which is esteemed for its antiseptic value, and the product will gain a reputation for freshening the breath.
American Tobacco Company acquires the 26-year-old Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company as James Buchanan Duke works to monopolize the industry (see 1890; 1911; Reynolds, 1889).
The Puerto Rican Police Force established February 21 gives the island its first civilian constabulary after centuries of military rule.
Washington's Post Office building is completed at Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street with a great glass-roofed court. The romanesque revival granite building is topped by a clock tower.
New York's 32-story Park Row Building is completed at 15 Park Row to designs by R. H. Robertson. Six stories higher than the St. Paul Building put up last year, it rises 386 feet into the air and will remain the world's tallest building until 1909.
The Newport, Rhode Island, "cottage" Rough Point is completed on Cliff Walk for railroad heir Frederick W. Vanderbilt to designs by Peabody & Stearns. Frederick Law Olmsted has landscaped the 10-acre grounds, whose granite house will be enlarged to 30,000 square feet (about 70 rooms) after tobacco mogul James Buchanan Duke acquires it in 1922 and engages Philadelphia architect Horce Trumbauer to expand it.
London's Carlton House Hotel opens in Waterloo Place near the Carlton Club and Carlton House Terrace. César Ritz of the 10-year-old Savoy Hotel is manager, and Auguste Escoffier of the year-old Paris Ritz is in charge of the restaurant kitchen (see London Ritz, 1902).
Wisconsin's last wild passenger pigeon is shot (see 1878; 1914).
The deadliest U.S. tornado since 1896 hits New Richmond, Wisconsin, June 12, killing 117 people.
Mount Rainier National Park is created by act of Congress; it embraces 242,000 acres of dense forests and meadows radiating from the slopes of an ancient 14,408-foot volcano in Washington State and contains the greatest single-peak glacial system in the United States. Half of America's virgin forests have been destroyed (see 1897; Roosevelt, 1902).
Congress passes a Refuse Act empowering the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prosecute polluters. The law provides for fines of up to $2,500 for oil spills and similar acts of pollution but will not be enforced.
The Columbia River Packers Association is created by seven chinook salmon canneries at the mouth of the river, one of which packs its fish under the name Bumble Bee. CRPA will acquire several sailing vessels in 1901, load them with lumber, coal, building and canning materials, and build a cannery on the Nushagak River at Bristol Bay in northwestern Alaska that will be followed by many more CRPA Alaskan canneries (see 1938).
Gloucester, Mass., fish packer Slade Gorton obtains a patent on the Gorton Codfish cake (see 1883). Now 67, he has worked with his sons to build a substantial business based on cod from the North Atlantic.
The boll weevil Anthonomus grandis crosses the Rio Grande from Mexico and begins to spread north and east through U.S. cotton fields. The weevil will destroy vast acreages of cotton, devastating Southern agriculture (see 1916, 1921; Alabama, 1915).
The Russian grain harvest is 65 million tons, double the harvest of 30 years ago, as farmers plant 200 million acres to grain.
Cerealist Mark Carleton introduces Kubanka durum wheat from southeastern Russia into North Dakota, which will be the leading U.S. producer of the wheat most suitable for macaroni and spaghetti (see 1895; Kharkov, 1900).
The first U.S. concrete grain elevator goes up at the western edge of Minneapolis. Frank H. Peavey has expanded with new elevators throughout the Northwest, paying huge insurance premiums on the wooden elevators and their contents; he has sent his son-in-law Frank T. Heffelfinger and Minneapolis banker C. F. Haglin to Europe in search of the best method for storing grain (see 1886), they have returned with praise for a Romanian concrete elevator, and Peavey has defied the conventional wisdom that only wood has the necessary "give" for storing grain. Skeptics call his 80-foot-tall concrete tank "Peavey's Folly" and predict that it will explode when grain is drawn out of its bottom, but the concrete structure proves its critics wrong and will lead to a general replacement of wooden elevators throughout the country (see 1900).
Egypt has famine as an intense drought reduces crops. Millions die of starvation, which is experienced elsewhere in Africa and also in India, where monsoons fail and crop production falls (see 1900).
San Francisco businessman Horace Fletcher celebrates his 50th birthday August 10 by bicycling 200 miles. The five-foot-six-inch importer of Oriental goods withdrew from business 4 years ago so broken in health that no insurance company would write a policy on his life, but he has built himself up on a diet of milk, breakfast food, and maple sugar, averaging 11¢ per day on food, and has used strict diet to reduce his weight from 217 pounds to 152 (see 1901).
Two out of five Britons who apply for enlistment in the army for service in the Boer War are rejected as "medically unfit"; the proportion is even higher among men from industrial areas, where poverty contributes to poor nutrition among working-class people.
Thorstein Veblen notes that certain foods and beverages are esteemed as evidence of conspicuous consumption, as is drunkenness. Having a large belly tells the world that the man with the protruding abdomen is a person of substance (but it also indicates that the typical American or European male finds it difficult to adjust his diet to his increasingly sedentary life).
The American Sugar Refining trust has almost a 100 percent monopoly in the U.S. industry (see 1897; 1907).
American Beet Sugar Company is organized as the first Colorado beet-sugar refinery opens at Grand Junction.
United Fruit Company is incorporated by banana exporter Minor C. Keith and the Boston Fruit Company, which has been distributing Keith's fruit since the failure of his New Orleans distributor (which cost Keith $1.5 million) (see transportation, 1871; 1885). Andrew Preston is president of the new firm, Keith first vice president. United Fruit controls 112 miles of railroad with 212,494 acres of land, more than 61,000 acres of it in production (see 1929).
Russian-born Alabama banana dealer Samuel Zemurray, 21, expands his operations to New Orleans after several years of selling fruit to grocers. Taken to America in steerage from his native Bessarabia by an aunt 7 years ago, "Sam the Banana Man" (as grocers call him) worked for $1 per week helping an aged peddler, earned enough to buy $750 worth of bananas at Mobile and ship them inland by rail rexpress, telegraphed grocers in towns along the route to come to the railroad sidings for ripe bananas, made a profit of $35 on the venture, and reinvested it in more ambitious ventures. He brought the rest of his family to Alabama in 1896, settled them near Selma, now has $100,000 in the bank, tries in earnest to learn Spanish, will borrow heavily to acquire part ownership of two tramp steamers, and will buy 5,000 acres of banana properties in Honduras, naming his enterprise Cuyamel Fruit Company (see politics, 1911).
The California Fruit Canners Association is created by a consolidation of 11 old-line companies representing nearly half the state's packers, including Dawson & Cutting, the first commercial fruit packers in the West, and Italian-born packer John Mark Fontana (see 1916).
C. A. Swanson & Sons has its beginnings in the Jerpe Commission Company, started at Omaha by Swedish-born grocer Carl A. Swanson, 21, with local entrepreneurs Frank D. Ellison and John P. Jerpe. Swanson arrived from Sweden 4 years ago speaking no English, lived with two sisters at Omaha, and has gone to night school while working as a grocer's clerk. Begun with $456 in capital, the wholesale grocery firm will be incorporated in 1905 with a capitalization of $10,000 and will prosper in poultry, eggs, and butter (see 1945).
Flour-milling pioneer (and five-term Minnesota state senator) Charles A. Pillsbury dies at Minneapolis September 17 at age 56.
A milk separator invented by German mechanics Carl Miele and Reinhard Zinkann will lead to the creation of a worldwide company that will produce and market a wide range of consumer products under the Miele name (see everyday life, 1901).
New York Condensed Milk Company becomes Borden's Condensed Milk Company. It will be renamed Borden Company in 1919, Borden, Inc. in 1968 (see Elgin, 1894).
Carnation evaporated milk goes on sale September 9 at Seattle, where Klondike-bound gold seekers buy it from Pacific Coast Condensed Milk founder Elbridge Amos Stuart, 49. An Indiana Quaker who became a grocer at El Paso, Texas, Stuart has come to suspect that bad milk is the cause of so many children dying of "summer complaint"; he has invested his savings in a new process to manufacture canned, sterilized, evaporated milk and has set up a small plant at nearby Kent with help from John Meyenberg of Helvetia Condensed Milk in Highland Park, Illinois. (see Our Pet, 1894). On his first day Stuart sells 55 cases of 48 16-oz. cans each—the equivalent of 2,640 quarts of fluid milk (see 1906).
A patent for "composition milk" (procédé et appareil pour fixer la composition des liquides) is granted December 26 to French inventor Auguste Gaulin, owner of the Gaulin Dairy Machinery Equipment Company at Paris (see 1900; Marix, 1892).
The Jell-O formula created 2 years ago by Pearl Wait is acquired for $450 from Wait by his Le Roy, New York, neighbor Orator Francis Woodward, who has had some success marketing patent medicines and has just started the Genesee Pure Food Company to produce a cereal he calls Grain-O (see 1906).
Armenian-born confectioner-peddler Peter Paul Halajian at Naugatuck, Connecticut, advertises "Good candies at low prices. See our mixed candy at 10¢ a pound, three pounds for 25¢ . . . Fruits and nuts of all kinds. Peter Paul."
Coca-Cola is bottled for the first time by Chattanooga, Tennessee, lawyers Benjamin F. Thomas and Joseph B. Whitehead, who have traveled to Atlanta and persuaded Asa Candler to let them try bottling his beverage under contract (see 1895). Coca-Cola Company will give seven parent bottlers contracts to establish local bottling companies and supply them with syrup, it will acquire these bottlers over the years (the last one in 1974), but most Coca-Cola continues to be dispensed by soda jerks from syrup mixed with carbonated water (see 1915; Britain, 1900).
Suntory Ltd. has its beginnings in the Japanese beverage company Kotobukiya founded by distiller Shinjiro Torii, whose whiskies, beers, and other alcoholic beverages will make it one of the world's largest such enterprises.
"Conspicuous consumption" and "conspicuous waste" require such large expenditures that they are "probably the most effectual of the Malthusian prudential checks" on population growth and make for low birthrates in some classes of society, writes Thorstein Veblen in his Theory of the Leisure Class.
Emigration of Russians increases to more than 223,000, up from 108,000 4 years ago, as the new Trans-Siberian Railway encourages settlement along its right-of-way.
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